


Time Stands Still

by theLiterator



Series: Welcome Home [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, League of Assassins - Freeform, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 06:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10431639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: Dick hasn't seen him inyears.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pentapus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [【翻译】时间静止](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12446764) by [Robin_and_Hood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin_and_Hood/pseuds/Robin_and_Hood)



> Pentapus had an idea. This is not that idea, but I wrote it because of her.

They drag him from his cell into a room that is deeper, darker, worse, and he flinches away from the hands that position him on his knees, falls.

"Richard Grayson," Ra’s intones, and Dick tries to glare at him. "You have been a disappointment from start to finish, and now, I am informed, you are dying."

There's a strangled noise from somewhere behind him, to his left-- he can’t move well enough to look, and he can’t muster his thoughts properly in order to decide what the sound means, who may have made it.

"There is, of course, a choice; you are the protege of my greatest rival, my only equal. I would offer you what I would offer him," Ra’s says, and Dick shakes his head, a rasping rough ‘no’ falling from his lips.

Ra’s shakes his head sadly and then kicks him in the chest-- knocking the breath out of Dick. He had broken ribs, and he wasn’t sure but he thought maybe a punctured lung ( _could be what’s killing me,_ the thought comes, detached, unimportant), so he couldn’t get it back.

He lay where he’d fallen, gasping for breath.

"A pity," Ra’s says, finally, and Dick wondered why he’d waited so long. "Grant him mercy."

" _Grayson!"_ someone screams, and Dick flops his head in the direction of the voice this time. One of the gathered assassins is shrugging out of his ornamental overrobe and running to his side, and he kneels at Dick’s side. "Grayson," he whispers, and Dick blinks at him.

It takes him too long to recognize the young man looking down at him, and he’s a little embarrassed, even under the haze of pain and deprivation, that it’s Bruce he thinks he sees at first.

Not Bruce-Bruce, not Batman as he is now, but _Bruce_ who had run into the flames and torn him away from his dead parents and said "I’ve got you-- you aren’t alone. You _aren’t alone_."

"Damian?" he questions, because he’d thought-- well. He’d thought a lot of things that were apparently wrong. He hasn’t seen Damian in years.

"Hey, Robin," he adds. "I’m better than I look." Seems like the instinct to protect Bruce’s son, _his_ Robin, is still as strong as it had been… then.

It’s been a long time, but he thinks he’s glad to know he still loves Damian, even after all these years.

Damian scoffs, and drags his hands down Dick’s chest, making him wince and try to curl away. "Richard," he whispers. "Let me carry you."

"No."

The word is firmer, this time. Dick doesn’t want to die, sure, but he wants what Ra’s, what _Damian_ is offering even less.

Damian shakes his head, and Dick drags strength from somewhere and gets his arm up to brush through Damian’s hair. It’s not quite the hair ruffle he’d intended, and when Damian collapses down onto him and buries his face against his throat he can’t _breathe_ for the pain, but it’s totally worth it.

"Hey, Robin," Dick says again, because he wants to say something but all the things he wants to say would have been rejected by the Robin he’d had stolen from him and he’s pretty sure the League-born man curling into Dick’s side will want them less.

" _Batman_ ," Damian whispers, and it’s not something he’d ever really acknowledged, for Dick, and it’s not something Dick had wanted, but he _gets_ it.

"Right here," he says.

Damian’s breaths come in harsh sucking pants, and in a different world, Dick would be able to joke ‘aren’t I the one with broken ribs?’ but instead he just lets the man cling to him, wraps his arms around him, and he thinks that at least he’s not alone.

The world fades in slow waves of pain and nausea, and he’d never thought dying would take so long or be so messy.

If anyone else had been pressing against him, if he’d been pretending not to notice anyone _else’s_ tears dampening the skin of his throat, he’d have asked for Ra’s’s brand of mercy, maybe even reminded him of the order from minutes or hours or an eon before, but he really, truly, doesn’t want to let go of Damian.

It’s not like getting him back would have been-- it’s not a chance at redemption, or a way to come to terms with his greatest, most shaming failure, but it is…

Nice.

And if he can say that about his death, well. Prolonging it seems worth it.

He can feel his grip around Damian’s shoulders slackening, and he doesn’t want to let go.

He makes a noise, low in his throat, and Damian pulls back to look at him, his face a grim mask of non-expression.

"Damian, my heir," Ra’s says. "He has rejected our gift."

"So he has," Damian says.

Dick shakes his head, panicked, he won’t, not that, not even for _Damian_.

"Shh," Damian says. "It will all be over soon."

"Will it?" Ra’s asks, and he comes near enough that his robes brush Dick’s face; his next labored breath is warm with cardamom and incense.

He wants to gag on it, but it’s better than the smell of his own body dying around him, and he’s pretty sure gagging would bring the sort of pain that knocks him out.

And he desperately needs to stay awake, to keep Damian from… he just needs to stay awake.

"I have offered him immortality," Ra’s says. "I have ordered his death. _Which will it be?"_

Damian’s fingers brush over Dick’s eyes, closing them, and he presses a chaste kiss to Dick’s forehead before withdrawing completely.

Dick doesn’t want to lose consciousness, but he can no more hold on to it than he can hold on to Damian.

He hopes, for the first time in his entire life, that Damian is drawing steel where he can’t see him.

He isn’t sure if he can’t open his eyes or if he doesn’t want to, but they remain closed, and the pain and darkness suck him under.


End file.
